We make websites the way the best magazines were made — with a point of view, a grid you can feel, and the kind of typographic restraint that quietly tells the visitor they're somewhere good. Editorial, brand-led, slow-cooked.
Open a hundred small-business websites in a row and you will start to see the same room, slightly redecorated. A hero image of a smiling team. A three-up of icons. A pricing table. A testimonial carousel that nobody asked for. The web has, somewhere in the last decade, quietly agreed on a visual lingua franca — and almost no one notices it is a language built for software, not for readers.
We come from the other side. Our reference shelves are stacked with old issues of Émigré, Apartamento, The Gentlewoman, Real Review and Domus. We were raised on the discipline of editorial design — where a grid is a moral position, where a footnote can carry as much weight as a headline, and where the page is something a reader walks through, not a funnel that processes them.
So we build websites the same way. Hand-set typography. Considered hierarchy. White space treated as a material, not as leftover. A point of view in the copy. Layouts that are willing to be quiet for a moment because the next paragraph deserves it. The result is a site that feels like a publication — something a person could imagine returning to — rather than a brochure that exists to be scrolled past once.
We don't sell packages. We offer four shapes of engagement, each of which we've shipped enough times to know what they actually cost — in time, in attention, and in the late-night conversation that good design always ends up requiring.
Wordmarks, type systems, palettes, voice and the broader visual world built from a blank page. We do this the long way: research, references, conviction, then craft. No moodboard farms.
The work we are best known for. Custom sites designed and built like long-form publications — bespoke typography, real layout, content that reads, performance that doesn't apologise.
For brands with a beautiful print identity and a digital presence that betrays it. We carry the soul across — type, rhythm, restraint — without pretending a webpage is a magazine spread.
A monthly engagement for brands that want a permanent design conscience. Seasonal campaigns, editorial production, judgment calls when the team isn't sure. Capped at six houses at a time.
A small sample of houses we've worked with over the past eighteen months. We refer to clients as collaborators because, frankly, that is what they are — without them the work would be ours alone, and our work alone is half of the work.
We follow the same arc on almost every engagement, because we've learned that good work is mostly the consequence of sequencing. Skip a chapter and you pay for it later.
"What is the thing you would never say out loud about your brand? Start there."
A free first call, then — if there is something to make — a paid diagnosis week. We read everything you've published, study your competitors honestly, and decide together whether we are the right shop for the work. About one in three calls becomes an engagement. We're picky on purpose.
"Most briefs answer the wrong question. We rewrite yours before we touch a pixel."
A week of structured interviews, audits and reference work. You receive a written diagnosis — usually fifteen to twenty pages — that names the actual problem we are solving, the audience we are solving it for, and the editorial position we'll take. You can take this document and hire someone else with it. Most don't.
"The grid is set in week one. Everything after is conviction and revision."
Typography, layout, voice, identity, build — depending on the engagement. We design directly in the browser after the second round, because a website is not a poster. We do not show three directions. We show one we believe in, and we argue for it like adults.
"Launch is the middle of the work, not the end of it."
Sixty days of post-launch care included on every build. After that, a small number of clients keep us on retainer for ongoing art direction, editorial production and seasonal refreshes. Nothing is shipped and forgotten. A brand is a long thing.
Every studio has a position whether it admits it or not. These are ours, written down so we can be held to them.
Kerning matters on the web too. So does optical sizing, baseline rhythm, hanging punctuation and the specific way a paragraph ends. We treat the screen like a press.
We will build you something that converts. We won't build you something whose only reason to exist is converting. There is a difference, and it shows.
Trends are how a brand dates itself with confidence. We work in the longer half-life — quiet typography, structural taste, decisions that read well in ten years.
The voice of a brand is half of how it looks. We write — or rewrite — the copy on most engagements, because design without words is decoration.
We take fewer engagements than we could. We finish them better than we have to. The economics make sense to us. They tend to make sense to our clients too.
Short essays, mostly about typography, occasionally about why a particular website made us angry. Published when there is something to say, not on a calendar.
Symmetry on the web has become a default rather than a decision. We make the case for the off-grid headline, the heavy bottom margin, and the kind of visual imbalance that pulls a reader forward instead of pinning them down.
Read the essayThe homepage used to be a cover, in the magazine sense — a curated statement made once a season, not a perpetually optimised funnel. A modest argument for treating the front page like editorial real estate again.
Read the essayDiagnosis is not free. We explain why we send a fifteen-page document before pixel one, what it costs us to write, and why our clients almost always say it was the most useful week of the engagement.
Read the essayCanvas Web took our print identity — which we'd nearly given up translating — and built a website that reads like a continuation of the magazine, not a compromise of it. The first site we've actually wanted to send people to.— Marguerite Hessel Founding Editor, Quarter Review
They asked us harder questions about the brand than our investors do. The diagnosis week alone was worth what other studios charge for the entire engagement. They take this seriously, which is rarer than it should be.— Théo Marcheteau Founder, Atelier Ourse
We answer every serious inquiry within two working days, usually faster. The first conversation is always free and rarely short — thirty to sixty minutes on the phone or in writing, whichever you prefer. Tell us about the brand, the moment you're in, and what is keeping you up at two in the morning.
If we're not the right studio for the work, we'll tell you in the same call and try to point you somewhere we trust. If we are, you'll have a written diagnosis on your desk within ten working days.
Fixed price, no surprises — figured out on the intro call.